Minoa destroyed by tidal wave 1500 BC

April 22, 2007 9:15 AM

Recent scientific evidence suggests the Minoa civilization on Crete was wiped out by a massive tidal wave around 1,500 BC, the same time the Santorini volcano erupted, 70 km north of Crete, up to ten times more powerful than the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. "Perhaps we now have an explanation of [the Atlantis myth] - a folk memory of a real ancient civilisation swallowed by the sea."
posted by stbalbach (22 comments total)

Also
posted by DU at 9:29 AM on April 22, 2007

Man, that's bad reporting—or should I say reprinting of press releases, since there doesn't appear to be any actual reporting involved. Costas Synolakis tells the BBC "Dudes! I have this THEORY that Minoan civilization was wiped out by this GIANT TIDAL WAVE! It's, like, SCIENCE!!" and instead of saying "Um, pal, that theory's been around for-fucking-ever, come back when you have something interesting," they just reprint it, all agog. But that's the BBC for you—they have the worst science reporting in the respectable press.

Also, the only "Minoa" I know of is in New York. "Minoan civilization" is so called because of the legendary King Minos; the geographical location was Crete.
posted by languagehat at 9:30 AM on April 22, 2007 [3 favorites]

I think it was due to global warming from cars getting low gas mileage.
posted by Postroad at 9:51 AM on April 22, 2007

I had a bit of the same reaction as languagehat, in that I'm pretty sure I recall being taught this theory back in high school, which is longer ago than I care to admit (think John Travolta and Donna Summer). Still, even if it is a well-worn theory, there are bound to be many interested people who hadn't been aware of it before, and possibly new research supporting (or refuting) it.

Related "news" that I'm sure I read long before the millennium changed (I think perhaps in Asimov's Guide to the Bible, but I'm not certain), and apparently also the topic of a BBC documentary (circa 2002) along the lines of the one in stbalbach's post, can be found here, citing computer-simulated evidence for speculating that the parting of the Red Sea and other Mosaic 'miracles' resulted from the Santorini eruption (which was of course itself caused by Yahweh ... or Hephaistos/Vulcan ... or possibly Poseidon/Neptune).
posted by NetizenKen at 10:33 AM on April 22, 2007

What languagehat said.

The BBC documentary on Timewatch on Friday night about this was terrible - it was like something from Channel Five, right down to the awful reconstructions, the portentous music and the OMG breathless narration. My favorite bit was when they cut a computer graphic of the tidal wave with footage of a real 2ft wave breaking, only heavily zoomed in.
posted by greycap at 10:51 AM on April 22, 2007

Oh, those Atlanteans were just a bunch of Cretans.

Having spent a couple of months working across the street from the Palace at Knossos in 1975, I spent a lot of time at that archeological site. What a sad tourist trap of a place. The impression it left me with was that Sir Arthur Evans was a fraud and his work as an archeologist shoddy and dubious. He slathered a lot of the site in steel reinforced concrete. Ugly and incomprehensible.

Interesting work going on in Crete now.

Thanks to your post I've been looking up the work of Joseph Alexander MacGillivray (Sandy MacGillivray) and even when there have been aspersions cast on his research, I'm inclined to think he's got some excellent points.
posted by nickyskye at 11:04 AM on April 22, 2007

"His book will appeal to those convinced by Martin Bernal's controversial Black Athena (1987) that ancient Greek culture had Afro-Asiatic origins."

*runs away*
posted by languagehat at 11:12 AM on April 22, 2007

This is such a ridiculously stupid theory. Crete? I mean how do they ignore the hours and hours of video evidence to the contrary? There's a whole documentary series about the Ancients who once lived at Atlantis, and as the research makes clear, Atlantis wasn't lost in the ocean due to some volcanic activity, but instead it was actually a city on a different planet, one with much higher water to land ratio. The people who lived there came to Earth through a Stargate about 10,000 years ago in order to get away from an invading Wraith armada, and eventually without their home world, they faded into the pages of history, leaving only the myth behind.
posted by hank_14 at 11:31 AM on April 22, 2007

Greycap: "My favorite bit was when they cut a computer graphic of the tidal wave with footage of a real 2ft wave breaking, only heavily zoomed in."

Ha - you should try telling the story at PBS funding levels. You're likely to have a zoom shot of someone pouring a glass of water.
posted by hank_14 at 11:34 AM on April 22, 2007

What?! I thought Atlantis was safe in the Pegasus galaxy.
posted by BioCSnerd at 12:09 PM on April 22, 2007

Was Minoa a Delta hub?
posted by evilcolonel at 12:16 PM on April 22, 2007

Yeah, this ain't the news. The news is the same ash cloud and tsunami may have reached as far away as Egypt (though they neglect to comment on the possibility of lava traveling through a neglectfully left-ajar Star Gate).
posted by steef at 12:41 PM on April 22, 2007

Not new at all. I did a book report about this in social studies class in the seventh grade. That was 30 years ago.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 12:52 PM on April 22, 2007

languagehat, am curious why you're running away?

Minoans and Egypt.

"The Minoans on Crete employed two types of scripts, a hieroglyphic script whose source of inspiration was probably Egypt, and a linear script, Linear A, perhaps inspired by the cuneiform of the eastern Mediterranean."

and

"British archaeologist Arthur Evans (1851-1941), who conducted excavations on the island, was convinced of African migrations to ancient Crete and noted "the multiplicity of these connections with the old indigenous race of the opposite African coast."

Many of the people I met in Crete certainly appeared to have North African blood in them. The Mediterranean isn't such a big sea and Crete is near the North African coast, seems likely sailors from North Africa would end up on Crete. Evans, among other archeologists, thought there was a connection. It's not a pet theory of Sandy MacGillivray, just saying is all.
posted by nickyskye at 1:10 PM on April 22, 2007

Because Martin Bernal is an egregious crackpot who knows nothing about linguistics and throws together whatever facts, theories, and vague impressions serve to propagate his "daring" stick-it-to-the-Man theories, which have gotten far more attention than they deserve thanks to the recent fashion for "Afrocentrism." Don't get me wrong, there was certainly plenty of reciprocal influence among all the ancient cultures around the eastern Mediterranean, and there were doubtless Egyptian influences on both Minoan and Ancient Greek culture (and, of course, vice versa)—but we'll never know for sure exactly what, because there simply isn't enough evidence left, and all the wishing and hoping in overheated scholarly imaginations won't change that. (Note the weasel words "probably" and "perhaps" in your first quote, and I would add that the "probably" should be another "perhaps.")

It's also true that 19th-century classical scholarship, like the 19th century in general, was lamentably racist, and there's nothing wrong with Bernal pointing that out, except that 1) he acts like it tars all scholarship about the ancient world (except, of course, for that of him and his crackpot buddies), and 2) he's just as racist in reverse in pretending that everything in Greek culture that's of any value came from Egypt (ignoring other foreign sources of influence like Anatolia) and also pretending that Egypt = (Black) Africa (ignoring all the evidence that the Egyptians were not black, did not depict themselves or think of themselves as black, and did not have much contact with any Black African cultures beyond (what's now) the Sudan, just up the Nile.

Oh, and good for Arthur Evans for discovering the sites he did, but he had crackpot ideas of his own and quarreled with all the more scientific archeologists of the day—he's hardly a trustworthy source.
posted by languagehat at 1:40 PM on April 22, 2007 [1 favorite]

What about The Minotaur?
Won't somone please think of The Minotaur!
posted by Fuzzy Monster at 1:49 PM on April 22, 2007

I don't know about no Atlantis, but the Sphinx really is about 12,000 years old, which is cool. That's all.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 1:59 PM on April 22, 2007

ah, Thanks for explaining languagehat. yup, amazing the many crackpots who get into position of authority, sounds like Bernal and Evans were examples of that. Martin Bernal, is Professor Emeritus of Ancient Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Cornell University. yikes.

Atlantis wasn't the only ancient city that sank. There is one in the Gulf of Cambay and Dwaraka is another one.
posted by nickyskye at 2:11 PM on April 22, 2007

*drat, meant to write the word mythological before Atlantis. I blame that on hank_14's wonderful comment. ;-)
posted by nickyskye at 3:13 PM on April 22, 2007

It was ALIENS, people. From OUTER SPACE. They needed MORE SPACES.
posted by davy at 7:43 PM on April 22, 2007

Because Martin Bernal is an egregious crackpot

That is probably the best review of Black Athena I have read. That was one of the most bonkers books I read in 3 years of studying ancient history.
posted by greycap at 11:53 PM on April 22, 2007

I don't know about no Atlantis, but the Sphinx really is about 12,000 years old, which is cool. That's all.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:59 PM on April 22

So you're saying, in other words, that it was built 2000 years before the end of the last ice age?
posted by Pastabagel at 8:48 AM on April 23, 2007